Subject:
RE: Review of GNU/Linux Tools Summary
From:
"Chris Karakas" ####@####.####
Date:
14 Dec 2003 17:18:13 -0000
Message-Id: <20031214.1w1.45306000@www.karakas-online.de>
Martin,
you misunderstood me. That's the short answer. Keep on reading for the long one.
>I fully understand what you're saying; but there is NO WAY that I am
>going to allow what I write, or how I write it, or structure it, or
>organise it, to be dictated by the way one particular search engine
>works.
>
I didn't say "what you write", neither did I say "how you write", or "how you
structure" it! That's all things that you interprete - but they are not the point here.
The point is: you write whatever you like, however you like and structure it as you
please. Then, you put it on the web. People come, read it and find it good. Fine!
Then those people go into the trouble to say something like "there's a cool document
on the X subject in *this link here*" - and link to your document. Hundreds of
people do this perhaps - even thousands. Imagine the effort!
Now you come up with a new restructuring of you document. Fine! You change the
content - also fine! Then you change the label from:
<sect1 id="network-commands"><title>Network Commands </title>
to, say:
<sect1 id="network-commands-2"><title>Network Commands revisited</title>
Note: We are not talking about changing the title from "Network Commands" to
"Network Commands revisited". This will affect your ranking too, but then, almost
everything that you write will affect it. (It will affect it a little more because
it's on the title - but that's again not the point.)
We are talking about changing that "damn" (to use your terms) label from
"network-commands" to "network-commands-2".
You just killed all the efforts of thousands of people that linked to your document!
Why?
Because labels become filenames in the document process from SGML to HTML! The
document that would be
network-commands.html
now is
network-commands-2.html
The original network-commands.html is nowhere to be found in your domain - thousands
of links on the Web now point to vacuum!
Google - and every other search engine - sees this and takes the old URL out of the
index. Of course, it indexes the new one. But the new one does not have any links
pointing to it - not yet. And perhaps people will not be willing to go into the
trouble of changing all their documents, just because you wanted to keep your
freedom of choosing (and changing!) the label (i.e. the resulting HTML *filename*)
at whim.
Thus, noone points to the new "reorganized" document. It is rated very low and
appears at place...uhmm 1 million something, out of 2,5 million results for "network
commands".
Congratulations! Nobody will read it, just because you wanted to keep your freedom.
Remember, the original document ranked at place 15 out of 2,5 million!
Are you satisfied now that nobody finds you?
I hope not.
All I asked is: keep the *labels* unchanged. Please! Is that so much?
It hurts to see documents commiting suicide out of nothing.
>Sorry -- as a writer, I will change structure as I damn' well see fit;
>as much as I like, and as the material demands.
>Google 'ratings' be blowed.
As a writer, you (hopefully) have read the old greek tragedies. One of my
favourites, as a Greek, is Antigone. There, Kreon, the king, argues that *he* is the
one who gives the orders and the city has to follow what *he* "damn' well sees fit".
Antigone then says to him:
"How fine you would then reign over an empty city!"
Dear writers, please take into account, that if you change those labels you already
have in place, your documents will sink into oblivion!
>What you advocate is rigid adherence to structural whim at the expense
>of fluidity of content.
>
Again, no! You argue for document death! I argue for "keeping the labels". Want to
move the content in a different chapter? Move it. Want to put more text? Put it.
Want to delete text? Delete it.
But keep the labels untouched. Please try to. If you know SGML, then you know we are
talking about section ids. The chapter and section labels in LyX. Meta-content, not
content.
Let me put a preemtive disclaimer here: I know that you can put a "HTML permanent
redirect" in your .htaccess file to indicate that the resource is now somewhere
else, under a different name. But this makes URL management difficult for me. How on
earth shall I know which labels Guru (the author whose document I host) changed in
his last reorganization? Am I supposed to do nothing else a whole day, other than
chasing diff outputs and editing .htaccess files? Just because the author wants to
keep his freedom of changing labels at his whim?
And: even with a "permanent redirect" in place, I don't think that the new page will
inherit the "importance" of the old one for the search engines (i.e. in terms of
ranking). Maybe, maybe not. Why go into the trouble? Just leave those labels
untouched, till we find a better solution. Cool labels don't change - basta.
--
--
Regards
Chris Karakas
http://www.karakas-online.de
